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Today's video conversation guest is Alex Heid, whose HackMiami title is Senior Security Researcher. The group started as a non-profit but is now technically a for-profit company that gets work from local businesses and shares it (and the fees it generates) among HackMiami members. You're welcome to join them at one of the regular meetings they hold at Planet Linux Caffe in Coral Gables (which, for those who care, is one of few businesses in the Miami area that accepts Bitcoins) and at other local venues, or at their annual conference, although you have a pretty long wait ahead of you for that; the next one is scheduled for May, 2014. Meanwhile, if you want to start something similar to HackMiami in your area, Alex has some good tips for you, including the idea of checking out -- and listing your group on -- the Hackerspaces Web site.

Robin: I am Robin Miller;
some of you know me as “Roblimo.” And we are talking
today with Alex Heid, who is a senior security researcher at
HackMiami. Alex, hello, and what does HackMiami do?

Alex:
Hey Rob, thanks for having me on. HackMiami is one of the first
hackerspaces that came out of South Florida. We are essentially a
group of information security professionals that have been in South
Florida for the last several years where we formally incorporated it
in 2009. And we started off as a non-profit organization and moved
into being a for-profit information security firm. And we have
biweekly meetings at the Planet Linux Caffe in Coral Gables, and we
also have an annual conference that we hold on Miami Beach.

Robin:
Okay. I heard about you guys through the annual conference, so
explain to me here, you have employees like yourself, right?

Alex:
Correct. It is essentially just a board of directors. There are
about three of us on the board of directors, and [Kurt] really is
about I would say, probably about 20 to 30 members and it is a fairly
informal organization and it works a lot like a contracting firm.
When work comes in we pass it on to those that would be most skilled
for the job. And we are also we are providing a lot of opportunities
for information security pros, to kind of do some moonlighting in
addition to their full time jobs. And it also provides a good way for
people to find employment, and get started in their careers and land
a gig, so there is a lot of recruiters and a lot of industry folks
who participate in our organization. So there’s always
opportunity to go places career-wise.

Robin:
So how did this group get started, this HackMiami group?

Alex:
Well, we started off just originally by going to the Florida
International University college campus, and jiggling doorknob
handles in the computer science building, and we found some open
rooms, and eventually became friends with a lot of computer science
students that were there. And from that point on, we’ve had our
gatherings fairly regularly, and it became from every two weeks to
having the annual conference. And we started off, we were at FIU
Florida International University and then we moved from there to
various restaurants and public meeting facilities that would host us,
and there isn’t really any restaurant in South Florida that is
going to turn away two dozen hungry hackers on a Saturday afternoon.
So it has provided a really good forum for us all to get together.
And now we still have our meetings at the Planet Linux Caffe in Coral
Gables, and even though we are sort of evolving and moving into our
creating our, opening up our office and having a full blown
hackerspace we still like having biweekly meetings at local
businesses to support them, and bring them business. Especially,
when it is a place like the Planet Linux Caffe which is a Linux
themed coffee shop down in Coral Gables.

Robin:
I have never heard of it. I am four hours’ drive away. Should I
come?

Alex:
Yeah, they do special events all the time, so if you just keep on
their site planetlinuxcaffe.com you could find all the stuff that
they are doing. It is definitely a place that’s worth checking
out, if you are ever in Miami.

Robin:
I will definitely get my camcorder and come there. Meanwhile,
meanwhile, you guys started out where you were, so can I just come
and join, just wander in?

Alex:
Yes, absolutely. All our meetings are open to the public and they
are held in public spaces kind of along the lines of how the 2600
meetings used to be when they had them down here. And anyone could
just walk in, introduce themselves, just kind of hang out, listen,
learn all the meetings are structured as the first half of
the meetings will have presentations, where researchers will go
through their latest projects, many types of exploits or
vulnerabilities that have been disclosed that are being researched
on. And then the second half of the meetings are actual hands-on labs
of how to actually do the stuff that was presented on. And so we try
to have a good mix of information and hands-on stuff. And that
combined with the networking opportunities that come with being in a
group like that it is definitely something that you find viable.

Robin:
However, it sounds to me like the general ‘Well I use
Windows, and it is getting blurry, my screen is and I think a
hacker had hacked my computer’ this isn’t your
preferred attendee, is it?

Alex:
No. Since we are hosted at a place called Planet Linux Caffe usually
the people who just kind of wander in are already fairly well versed
in alternative computing methods like Linux and so forth. So I would
say the average experience level of HackMiami participants would
already be in the moderate to advanced, but we certainly don’t
want to discourage new people from coming out and learning.
Everyone’s real cool, everyone is real open, and we are out to
just get information out and help people build their careers and
learn how to ____6:21internet.

Robin:
So what if somebody want to start something similar in their town,
what would you recommend, any advice for the fans, Alex?

Alex:
I highly recommend people starting up hackerspaces in their own
cities. So go to their visit hackerspaces.org, it is a Wiki
style listing of all the various hackerspaces around the world, I
would start just by throwing up a listing on that website for your
hometown, and you will be surprised if it starts to show up, and just
by nature of being on the hackerspaces.org website and being listed
there, you will find a pretty good strong community drop there. That
was originally the first place that we publicly listed our meetings,
and also using things like traditional social networking sites like
Meetup.com or Twitter or Facebook are also very helpful to promoting
the gathering. But primarily it is getting ingrained within the
hackerspace movement of creating a listing on hackerspaces.org would
probably be the best first step.

Robin:
It also sounds like something that local Linux users groups might
morph into.

Alex:
Oh absolutely. In fact, we do a lot of co-branded meetings and a lot
of projects with South Florida Linux users groups as well, so there
is a lot of membership crossover between the different Linux users
groups and HackMiami and also industry organizations like the ISSA or
OWASP.

Robin:
So do they support you with funds?

Alex:
Not so much funds but people. There will never be anyone actually
sending anyone a check or anything like that, but probably the best
talent out of all those organizations will end up gravitating towards
the hackerspaces. It is really one of those if you build it they
will come type situations.

Robin:
And you guys get work? What kind of . Really I mean for real?

Alex:
Oh yes, primarily the majority of our incoming contracts is for
penetration testing and vulnerability assessment engagements; we also
have a lot of speaking and training engagements as wellthat we get
booked for. Primarily it is the board of directors will either take
the job itself or they will pass it on to someone who will be able to
carry it out in a more efficient manner. And since we are such a
large group with such an array of talent, we get all sorts of
different inquiries for all sorts of different things. Our primary
revenue generator is penetration testing and also our training
seminars.

Robin:
You know what? It sounds like fun. I hope a lot of Slashdot readers
start something similar where they live, and the ones in
Miami meet up with you guys.
Thank you Alex, it has been a pleasure.

I moved to Miami a few years ago from an area with significant technological presence. A contrast is quite striking. I see SoFla as a technological (and, really, intellectual) wasteland. There are no high tech companies to speak of (well, there is Citrix, I think). General level of education, technological and otherwise, is relatively low compared to more "hi-tech" parts of the country. Add to that a peculiar local demographics where vanity is the primary motivation, and you get an environment in which it's difficult to create or maintain a techie movement. I applaud these guys for trying, of course.

Hmm, I was shocked at how much there IS here (though I'm coming from a wasteland in the UK). There's a cool vc/cafe/workspace area downtown (Windwood area? I'm unsure of the names, but the place with the cool graffiti all over the place near downtown). Opposite, there's a monstrous VC/development hothouse. There's the weekend get together of geeks where people bring in Glass, HTC send devs to show new toys/get feedback. And this planetlinux cafe (that I must admit is the one place I've not been to yet

All things being relative, the South Florida region has seen a lot of activity, while we are not in the same league as the Valley, Austin or New York there is a lot of work being done here with startups. Co-working and knowledge sharing spaces are active (The Lab Miami, Project Lift, MEC, Pipeline, RightSpace all come to mind). Organizations like SFTA, Refresh Miami, and the Ruby group are rife with attendees. Ignite Miami, and Social Media Miami have held community focused events. This year Ray Kurzweil